Thread: Bloody good goat recipe!

"Although meat is fall off the bone, it is on the dry side and stringy."

There is no safe answer

There's combination of things in my opinion. Think lamb, hogget, mutton, 12 yr old Ram. Any youngish meat will be more tender.

Ageing - as we know, if you age meat it will relax, and the connective tissue will begin to degrade. Longer is better, even if it begins to smell.

Game keepers in the past would hang stuff until it smelled on the outside and then cut those bits off and eat the inside. "Gamey" was a word for going off.

Chefs can tell by smell, if meat is, fresh, aged, about to turn, on the turn or has turned (bad).

When cooking whole cuts, a stringy result is probably because it was stringy or old before cooking. When cutting meat, whether is is carving a roast at the table, or cubing raw meat, make sure to cut across the grain. Cubed meat will be more edible than a whole joint in the crockpot.

Marinating can make difference, garlic, onion, red wine etc etc can tender something up, and stop it turning while it ages.

A trick we used to use for squid rings is to marinate the squid rings in mashed Kiwi fruit, for 30 minutes before washing, crumbing and then cooking them. I've heard that Pineapple works too. I used Kiwi fruit on some venison once, it was good, but if left too long in contact with the Kiwi fruit, it'll start to turn soft.

One of the more interesting meals I had in Burma, was Cow udder. When I smelt it before they cooked it, I told them it was bad, I'm a Chef I know! But they massaged it in salt for about 20 minutes and then bbq'd it over a wood fire, in cell phone sized chunks. Amazingly delicious, like fat belly pork, only with big nipples.

Oh and yes, a pressure cooker is good for making tough cuts edible.

For oven roasting, I use 180C° for normal cooking and roasting a small pork joint, 3 minutes-is, 170C° for longer will give amore tender and well cooked result. Chefs will fry a piece of fillet steak on both sides to brown it and then pop it in the oven to cook it further for 10 minutes, it should be rare.

Well done steak is travesty.